Hooking your players

So you want to return to the world of Dungeons and Dragons that you remember from your youth.  Or perhaps you play in a regular game and your kids want to know exactly what you do at what my daughter calls my "geek nights".  Maybe you have just read about D&D and want to see what it is all about.  How do you interest your kids in playing?

I fell into the category of my kids wanting to know just how you play D&D.  They all play World of Warcraft with my Wife and I so they have been exposed to the idea of basic role play and the fantasy genre.  So it was not a huge leap for them and was not something that came out of left field.

Each kid is different and has to be approached in the way that makes the most sense to them.  If you remember the good player type breakdown on pages 8-10 of the Dungeon Master's Guide they give a nice list of the types of players you might have in your group.  Just because your players are young does not mean they will not fall into one of these groups.  However, you might need to understand their personallity to explain the game in a way that interests and excites them.

Our son is a major storyteller and slayer.  He wants to be a screen writer when he grows up and loves to imagine these vivid stories.  He devours books and audio books.  He is also a typical boy and loves the action.  Introducing him to the game was easy.  I gave him a basic discription of how a play session works.  Each player uses a miniature to represent them on the map and the Dungeon Master discribes the action taking place.  Dice are rolled to determine if your actions are sucessfull or not.  He was looking through the Player's Handbook and the artwork helped to grab him as well.

Our middle daughter has an amazing imagination and quick wit.  She is our actor.  Give her a chance to be in the spotlight and she jumps at it.  For her the chance to control and act out the actions of her character were the key.  We talked about how she would get to choose what her character looks like, talks like, what race and class and what she wants to do.  Her eyes lit up with the thoughts of what she would do in a world she controls.

Our oldest daughter is an actor and instigator.  She always wants to be in the middle of the action and if there is no action she will make it.  Discribing how she would be able to move around in the world and take a lead role in what happens got her hooked quickly.  She was drawn to the chance to be a drama queen in the best of ways.

I would highly suggest being ready to take the next steps in playing Dungeons and Dragons once you once you find the best way to introduce your kids to the game.  Remeber being young and your attention span was not long.  There is a reason cartoons were only 30 minutes long ;).  You could jump right into an adventure with pre-made characters but I think that removes the connection to the characters that you want your kids to feel and let's admit it, character creation is tons of fun.  Next weeks post will talk about how to help your kids find the class and race that works best, how to fill out the four basic roles in your party and how to help them create a character that is fun and functional.